Her head is cocked to the side. Two big bows frame her dark hair and eyes. In this copy of a sepia photo from 1913, she appears to be wearing a locket. Mary Phagan is a young teenager whose life will soon be cut short. Her death will lead to the only lynching of a Jew in the history of America.
The case has had a long-lasting effect on Georgia Jews. A prominent Jewish woman of that era reported in a letter to a friend that 100 of Atlanta's Jewish leaders had met after the lynching and talked about what they could do without aggravating conditions. Nothing, they decided. They asked The New York Times to stop publicizing the case. They wanted to lie low. After earnest deliberation, the men felt that "for the safety and good of our people they had better not try to rouse the anger of the mob, for any attempt to bring the mob to justice would be disastrous to ourselves."
Not until a hate-bombing at The Temple in 1958 - after which Jews received a welcome outpouring of support from the city's gentiles - did many feel they could put the lynching case to rest in their hearts.
In 1909, at the age of 10, Mary Phagan began working part-time at an Atlanta textile mill. Having rebuilt itself from the ashes of the Civil War, the city exemplified the promise of the New South, according to Dr. Andy Ambrose, author of two books on Atlanta history. During the early 20th century, thousands of persons, many from rural areas, crowded into Atlanta seeking employment in factories and businesses. Women and children had been joining the labor pool and changing the makeup of the workforce in the New South.
By 1911, Mary Phagan had landed a full-time job with a paper manufacturer. Then in 1912, the 13-year-old signed on at the National Pencil Company and earned 10 cents an hour.
Her boss was Leo Frank, factory superintendent and a prominent member of Atlanta's German Jewish community. Tragedy would befall both and keep their names linked throughout history.
Most recently, the two were featured in a moving exhibit at the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta. "Seeking Justice: The Leo Frank Case Revisited," opened in February 2008 and is scheduled to close on February 22, 2009. It will reopen at New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage - a Living Memorial to the Holocaust on March 30, 2009.
Breman Executive Director Jane Leavey and archivist Sandy Berman spent more than 20 years building the collection that explores the Leo Frank case. Both have been with the Atlanta Jewish heritage museum since its opening in 1985.
"It was so much a part of the Atlanta and Southern Jewish history story," Berman says of the Frank case. "The more we delved into it, the more we realized it was a national story as well. É It really had an impact on the national news, on the Jewish community nationally. A lot of folks compare it to the [Alfred] Dreyfus case."
She explains that there was a rush to judgment in both cases. "Even when new evidence started to emerge, prosecution and police didn't really investigate it."
The "Seeking Justice" exhibit sets the stage and then tells the tale of the Frank case.
"The Civil War left the South's economy in ruins, its male population diminished by death and injury, and its social order forever changed by the abolition of slavery. Many Southerners were forced to leave behind their agrarian way of life for job opportunities in newly industrialized cities like Atlanta," reads the catalog and text at the exhibit prepared by Berman and Leavey.
"Through the late 1870s and into the 1900s, local Atlanta and regional leaders began to herald a vision of a 'New South' to redefine and rejuvenate the region after the Civil War and Reconstruction. The vision imagined a new industrial age that would bring increased economic opportunities for families, including women and children, who would happily join the workforce to bolster family incomes. It promised a society in which blacks and whites would live together in harmony and divisive issues related to immigration would not prevail in the region."
But in 1906, the race for governor erupted into a campaign of hatred. On September 22, a race riot claimed dozens of lives.
"Seeking Justice" shows how "nativism," the fear and distrust of immigrants, was festering in Atlanta society. "Jews of all backgrounds increasingly became associated with the 'evils' of industrialization," according to the exhibit. "It was against this backdrop of anti-immigration sentiment that the case against Leo Frank was made."
Northern "foreign" factory bosses were viewed as dangerous and even predatory toward Southern white women and children, who had worked alongside their men in agriculture and now were finding jobs in industry on their own.
"Children were paid far less than adult workers for work that was dangerous and exhausting. Few found the time or energy for education. In 1910, less than one-half of white school-age children in Atlanta were enrolled in the city's public schools," reads the catalog and text at the exhibit.
Still, Mary Phagan knew how to write. The exhibit features a postcard to her cousin Myrtle bearing childish letters. Memorabilia and pictures of Mary are in one corner of a room designed to look like a house. She was said to be a model girl - bright, eager and cheerful.
On the other side of the room are remnants from another life: Leo Frank's. A framed box bears his tiny white baby shoes and a silver rattle. There is a yellowed wedding invitation and marriage certificate for Frank and Lucille Selig from November 30, 1910. Described as a bookish perfectionist who was somewhat formal, shy and quiet in his demeanor, Frank grew up in Brooklyn and graduated from Cornell University with a degree in mechanical engineering. He moved south after accepting the invitation of his uncle, Moses Frank, to manage the National Pencil Company.
"Seeking Justice" includes Leo Frank's desk with his Cornell diploma above it. Nearby are framed ads for lead pencils.
As the exhibit continues from displays introducing the context to those detailing the crime, the atmosphere becomes grim.
On Confederate Memorial Day, April 26, 1913, a night watchman found Mary Phagan murdered in the basement of the pencil factory. She was 13. Frank, 29, the last person to admit seeing her alive, was arrested for the crime.
"Police Have the Strangler," bugled one of Atlanta's daily newspapers. Such sensational headlines convinced many of Frank's guilt before the trial, notes Steve Oney, author of "And the Dead Shall Rise," an examination of the Frank case and winner of the 2004 National Jewish Book Award for history.
Days after a grand jury indicted Frank with reportedly little physical evidence, a tip prompted police to return their attention to another man they had suspected earlier: Jim Conley, the pencil company's black janitor.
However, during a month-long trial by an all male, all white and all Christian jury, public sentiment turned against Frank. Berman says that it was fueled by the local press and that prosecutors and police aided in stirring up anti-Frank sentiment. Frank's wife and mother worked frantically to help his cause, writing letters to newspapers, distributing leaflets and speaking publicly to promote his innocence. It didn't help; he was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging.
While his case was tied up in appeals to the Georgia and United States Supreme Courts, Frank spent two years in jail. All appeals were defeated.
The Defense asked the Georgia Prison Commission to recommend that Gov. John Slaton, about to complete his term, advocate for clemency. Although the commission denied the request, the governor pored over thousands of pages of documents, including new incriminating evidence against Conley, the janitor, and ended up commuting Frank's death sentence to life in prison.
The anti-Semitic rumblings grew even louder. One newspaper cried for the lynching of Gov. Slaton and Frank. "Our grand old Empire State HAS BEEN RAPED! É Jew money has debased us, bought us, and sold us - and laughs at us," rabble-rousing editor Tom Watson wrote in his weekly rag, The Jeffersonian.
A 1915 picture shows Slaton hung in effigy outside the governor's mansion. Meanwhile, Frank was spirited away to the state prison farm in Milledgeville. A chilling display in "Seeking Justice" foreshadows the rest of the story.
Visitors see, propped on a riser, an actual thick door with broken glass panes. This was the door to the infirmary behind the warden's office, where Leo Frank was recuperating when the lynching party arrived. He was healing from a throat-slashing by a fellow prisoner, who had grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen.
"Mob Takes Frank from Jail," read the August 17, 1915, headlines in the Atlanta Constitution. The mob included highly placed, politically connected members of society - an ex-governor, solicitor general, state legislator, judge, doctor and attorney. They met no resistance from the prison guards when they seized Frank.
They hanged him from a large oak tree, as onlookers gawked and cut souvenirs from the sleeve of his nightshirt. The exhibit shows one souvenir piece of the tree, fashioned into a pick. A grainy black-and-white film captures the crowd at the lynching site almost 100 years ago and then outside the funeral home.
More modern technology shows film clips of a 1982 interview with Frank's former office boy, who broke his silence of 69 years and revealed he had seen Jim Conley carrying Mary Phagan's limp body the day of her murder. Conley had threatened to kill the boy if he ever snitched.
Also seen on different videos are descendants of Frank, Phagan, Slaton and other key players.
The information from 83-year-old Alonzo Mann, the former office boy, led Atlanta's Jewish community to petition for a posthumous pardon for Frank. In 1986, Georgia issued a pardon of sorts on the grounds that Frank's civil rights had been violated when the state failed to protect him from the vigilante lynch mob. It didn't totally satisfy the Jewish community because it didn't address the question of guilt or innocence. The exhibit calls it "a diluted victory."
At the Breman museum, Jane Leavey concludes in an interview: "I think that it is, among a lot of other things, a cautionary tale about the fragility of our justice system. I think it raises a number of questions about what is justice.
"If Leo was innocent, he didn't receive justice. If he was guilty, he also didn't receive justice in terms of the court system. If he was innocent, Mary also didn't receive justice, because her killer was never punished."
[Published in the Jerusalem Report, January 19, 2009]